Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/77

 and the opportune interruption of industry, is, through the legal operation of law, made impossible or at least costly and difficult."

This places the unions in a decidedly embarrassing position in opposition to the capitalists, so that one can scarcely expect any effective restriction of exploitation from them. One may well reflect upon what action the governmental power will take in this former El Dorado of the unions, England, if the unions attempt any forcible restraint upon capital.

In the same way the so-called Municipal Socialism is limited to those States and social organizations where universal suffrage in the municipality rules. It must always remain bound to the general economic and political conditions, and can never proceed independently. To be sure, the proletariat may find the municipal government in the individual industrial communities in their hands before they have the strength to conquer the general government, and they can by means of this control, or at least restrain, action hostile to the proletariat and carry through individual betterments which could not be expected from a bourgeois regime. But such municipal governments find themselves limited not alone by the power of the State, but also by their own economic helplessness. They are mostly poor municipalities, almost exclusively made up of proletarians, that are first conquered by the social democracy. Where shall these obtain the means to carry